The Colonel got up and walked to the window. These same savage pangs had once torn him. In his powerful heyday it had taken all the force of his manhood to crush them. How could she wage that blasting fight? He turned and looked at her as she sat fallen together in the embrace of the chair. “I think you’re right, June, about going away,” he said. “It’s the best thing for you to do. The old man’ll have to get on as well as he can for a while without you.” She did not move and answered in a dull voice: “It’s the only thing for me to do.” “When were you thinking of going?” “Soon--as soon as I can. Anyway before January. I must go before then. And--and--Uncle Jim, this was what I came to ask you and was afraid. We’ve been a long time getting to it.” She looked at him with a sort of tentative uneasiness. “It’s asking a good deal,” she added, “but you’ve always been so good to me.” “What is it, dearie?” he said gently. “Don’t you know it’s my pleasure to do anything for you?” “I want you to give me the money to go with.” For a moment the Colonel was so surprised that he looked at her without answering. As she spoke the color came faintly into her face. “It--it--won’t be so very much,” she went on hurriedly, “perhaps enough for a year. I thought five thousand dollars would do.” “Five thousand dollars,” he said, recovering himself, “five thousand dollars? Why of course--” He paused, looking down on the floor and asking himself where he was to get five thousand dollars. “I’ll get it for you, only you’ll have to give me a few days.” She leaned forward with a sudden energy of animation and clasped his hand. “I knew you’d do it,” she said. “I knew if I came to you for help I’d never be disappointed. I asked father for it, and he!--” she completed the sentence with a shrug. “He hadn’t it, perhaps,” suggested the Colonel. “That’s what he said. He said he couldn’t possibly give it to me, that he was in debt now. And look at the way we live! Look at this dress! He knows how I feel. He has only to look at me, but he said he couldn’t give it.” “Will five thousand be enough, do you think?” said the Colonel, who had no comments to make on Allen, of whose mode of life and need of money he knew more than June. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about traveling. I’ve never been anywhere but in California and Nevada. But it ought to be enough for a while. Anyway, if I had that I could go, I could get away from all this. I could get away from San Francisco and California, and the people and things that torture me.” She rose from the chair and picked up her umbrella. Her languor of dejection had returned. She cast a listless eye toward the pane and said: “I must go. It’ll soon be dark.” Then she moved toward the window and for a moment stood looking down on the street.